ASUU Gives Condition To End Strike As the nationwide strike by Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) enters its second week, it has insisted that the only condition for calling off the strike is for the federalgovernment to honour their 2009 GFN/ASUU agreement. The union President, Dr Nasir Fagge Isa, made known the union’s stand on the strike, yesterday, in Abuja. Speaking at the review of President Jonathan’s report on education, agriculture and transportation organised by Civil Society Forum, he said that the only way forward was for the government to do the right thing. Isa said, “Whether the strike will continue or be called off is dependent on government’s decision. If the government does what is right, I assure you that we will call off the strike immediately, we will look at what government have and we will review the situation”. Reacting to the federal government’s claimsthat the strike lacks decorum, he said, “We don’t have to inform anybody that we are taking an action when it becomes clear to us that what we are doing cannot make any headway. We looked at all the options available before embarking on the strike. “I must remind you that a strike is a fundamental right of a worker, if it becomes clear to a worker that the dialogue with his employer is becoming the dialogue of the deaf and dump, the worker has the right to withdraw his services, that is a fundamental right, it is enshrined in the ILO conventions and it is part of the right of Nigerian citizens. “We have realised that each time we reached an agreement with the government, it finds it difficult to faithfully implement the provisions of the agreement and that is the reason why our members nationwide advised that we just go back to the trenches. “You should ask the government, out of the nine provisions of the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) we had how many have been implemented. “Of all the problems identified in the Need Assessment report, how many have been implemented? Our universities are still the way they are, we don’t want to continue deceiving ourselves. We expect that dialogue should produce results, we have been dialoguing for one and half years and we are tired of doing that, we want actions”, he insisted. Meanwhile, the Minister of Education, Prof. Ruqayyatu Rufa’I, on Monday appealed to the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), tosuspend its current strike and “go back to classes.” Rufa’I, who made the appeal at a meeting with vice-chancellors of Nigerian universities in Abuja said: “we plead with them to go back to classes. “We are having a meeting tomorrow at the National Assembly with the Senate and House of Representativesto resolve all the issues. “Besides, the white paper on the 2010 Visitation Panel Reports on Federal Universities has since been released and forwarded to the universities for implementation. “Consequently, monitoring teams will soon visit the universities to ensure implementation of the recommendations.’’
Posted on: Tue, 09 Jul 2013 11:37:34 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015